The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched A Workplace Revolution At 30,000 Feet, Wulfhart - B

                     In exchange for what was deemed a glamorous job involving travel and designer uniforms, young women in the 1960's were held to demanding physical requirements emphasizing their attractiveness in a job that ended at age 32, or earlier if pregnant or married. They were weighed often, held to strict make-up standards, and frequently subject to 'girdle checks' by male superiors. This is the story of how those women changed it all. "The stewardess rebellion is a story of harnessing the energy of the women's movement to make radical change."

                    Patt Gibbs went to work for American Airlines in 1962. AA had been the first to set the age 32 limit. Stewardess School was an intense six week program that she graduated from at the age of 20. She became a rep for the Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Association, which was trying to bring the age 32 issue to the attention of Congress.  Exactly how the Civil Rights Acts provisions on discrimination based on gender would be enforced was a wide open question. The EEOC, pushed by a staff lawyer, Sonia Pressman, and the NOW finally began to look at issues pertaining to women in the workplace. A ruling from the EEOC turned against the airlines, who successfully appealed to the courts. The age 32 rule and the marriage rule were both under attack. In a round of negotiations, Patt and the ALSSA members threatened to switch their union from the TWU to the Teamsters. AA caved in for a 25-40% increase in wages in order to avoid the Teamsters. In 1968, the EEOC agreed that being a woman was not a 'bonafide occupational qualification' as the airlines had constructed the job. The EEOC also negated the age 32 and marriage rules. "The stewardesses had taken a temporary job, a 'training ground for future wives and mothers', and turned it into a career."

                  Tommie Hutto joined American in 1970. The decade saw many of the old rules fall away, and to some extent many were forgotten simply because men were now working as flight attendants. Lesbians, gay men, Latinx, Asians, and people of color were now all working as flight attendants. Tommie joined NOW and the nascent Stewardesses For Women's Rights (SFWR). One issue that SFWR was able to successfully tackle, with some help from Ralph Nader, was the airlines business of transporting radioactive materials. The FAA banned the practice. "SFWR's campaign against sexist advertising earned column inches" in major national newspapers. Tommie ran for and was elected a union representative. Under her leadership, the women were finally able to get single rooms for overnight trips.

                Patt Gibbs was in on the ground floor of one of the most important decisions the women ever made. Fed up with the work of the TWU, which obtained better wages for those who cleaned the planes than they did for the flight attendants, they began to work to become independent of the male-dominated union. Tommie, however, was union president and opposed to the move. TWA and Pan Am's flight attendants withdrew from the TWU and formed their own unions. The rebels won            and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants was formed.  Tommie was not happy, but the night of the election, she emptied out the union's NY office and turned everything over to the APFA. Although it got off to a slow start, the APFA eventually became an extraordinarily successful union. 

              Ironically, a year after the creation of the union, deregulation of the industry threw it into decades of financial disarray. AA and the union survived. Tommie was president, and a flight attendant well into the new century. Patt left, went to law school, and became a lawyer.  Their accomplishments were extraordinary. Women's rights remain at the forefront of the labor movement, and thankfully the obstinate, sexist attitudes of the management of half-a-century ago are fading away.